Don't Forget to Pack a Photographer

Travelers Book Professionals to Photograph Best Moments of a Vacation; Services Offer Thinner Thighs, Bluer Skies

By

Andrea Petersen

Updated July 5, 2012 1:15 p.m. ET

For summer vacation, the flight is booked, the hotel is reserved, the bags are packed, but what about the professional photographer to take snapshots and make you look supernaturally gorgeous?

Travelers are hiring professionals to take their vacation photos. Vacationers also want better shots to post on social media, where the quality of vacation photos are increasingly scrutinized. Andrea Petersen has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Helene Havard.

A growing number of hotels and resorts are offering sessions with photographers to chronicle guests' vacations. Travelers want to record memorable moments without ruining them stressing about focus and flash. They want more sophisticated shots to share on social media. And vacationers realize that an iPhone may not catch that perfect surfing or skiing triumph.

Professional Vacation Photos

Local photographer Joseph Jones shoots Chad and Katya Bradford while on vacation at Jumby Bay Resort in Antigua. Jose Jimenez-Tirado for The Wall Street Journal

In May, Jumby Bay, a Rosewood Resort in Antigua in the Caribbean began offering a "Together Package" for couples that includes a two-hour shoot with a professional photographer. Earlier this year, the Sanderling Resort & Spa in Duck, N.C., launched an "Everlasting Memories" package with a family photo shoot and a YouTube video of the session (a disc of images is guaranteed within a week).

The Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora is planning to unveil a "Romance" room-service menu in August that will feature a couples' photo session. Walt Disney World in 2010 started selling a $350 one-hour "Enhanced Portrait Session." It includes retouching and flourishes such as black-and-white and sepia shots and a customized photo book (prints cost extra). A perk: Getting to wander around the Epcot theme park before it opens to other guests.

A host of independent freelance wedding and adventure photographers are also starting to offer vacation travel shots, seeing them as a lucrative side business.

Jumby Bay said it came up with the "Together Package" because its employees were getting so many requests from guests to take their pictures. The surge in multigenerational trips—often the only time an extended family is in the same place and, hopefully, relatively relaxed—is also boosting the popularity of professional shoots.

When family vacation photos were relegated to dusty albums and slide shows, getting quality pictures perhaps wasn't that critical. That's not so when you're sharing your shots with hundreds—or thousands—of Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Then there is the perennial vacation photography problem: the missing family member. Shira and Chuck Badger, 35-year-old chiropractors from Henderson, Nev., say they have few vacation pictures that show both of them. They try the extended-arm self-portrait trick but "we always end up with double chins in those photos," says Mr. Badger. "And we're both in good shape." When the Badgers planned their wedding and honeymoon trip to the Four Seasons Bora Bora this week, they booked a photographer not only for their sunset ceremony, but also paid for a photographer and videographer (equipped with an underwater camera) to accompany them on a snorkeling trip to see manta rays.

Chad and Katya Bradford of Arlington, Va., booked Jumby Bay's Together Package for their honeymoon. The couple had photos taken of them on bicycles, lounging in a hammock and on a dock at sunset. The couple appreciated "having one less thing to worry about on our vacation," says Mr. Bradford, a 32-year-old consultant for the federal government. (The price tag for the Together Package starts at $10,500 for seven nights. It also includes meals, a couples' massage and other services.)

Natalie Davis has been vacationing on the North Carolina coast since she was 8 years old and bought a vacation house there last year. "We usually just ask anyone lying in the sun, 'Can you take a picture of all four of us?' " says Ms. Davis, who is from Vienna, Va. This week, she hired husband-and-wife team Mike and Allie Hawkins to shoot her, her husband and two sons on the beach in Duck.

Grant Myrdal, a photographer from Bend, Ore., offers shoots with skiers and snowboarders on the slopes of Mount Hood Meadows Ski Resort. "When someone is going 40 miles an hour down the hill, an iPhone doesn't do it," says Mr. Myrdal, a former photographer for surfing magazines. "I'll snowboard alongside [clients] with my camera firing away and get a sequence of shots of them doing big turns and the spray flying off of the powder," he says.

Prices for vacation photo sessions can range from about $100 an hour to much more. The Four Seasons Resort Hualalai in Hawaii, for example, charges $800 for an hour. A half-day shoot is $3,200.

Abercrombie & Kent, the luxury-travel outfitter, occasionally has clients who hire photographers for their entire vacations. "They just want to enjoy the destination without anyone [in the family] being responsible and having to worry about missing a shot or a memorable experience," says Rob Veden, manager of private travel at A&K. Mr. Veden says many clients hire a photographer for hours or a day.

Most pros offer some retouching to digitally erase blemishes and wayward hairs and brighten eyes and teeth. Tara Leigh, a photographer in Nevis in the Caribbean, has had some more involved requests. For a recent maternity shoot with a pregnant vacationer, the client said, "I don't want my thighs to be that big," Ms. Leigh recalls. Ms. Leigh, who had worked as a fashion photographer in Toronto, was used to digitally shrinking models. Afterward, the client was thrilled. "She said, 'I look like a supermodel pregnant lady,' " Ms. Leigh says.

Some city photographers are starting to get requests. Anna Azarov, a part-time photographer in New York, recently was hired to spend three hours with a vacationing couple from St. Petersburg, Russia. (She got the gig through the couple's travel agency.) Ms. Azarov shot them in Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, Bryant Park and "we took a little cab ride so they could get their photos taken inside a New York cab," Ms. Azarov says. They also wanted shots of themselves in McDonald's and Starbucks.

Last August, Cathy Bork from Egg Harbor Township, N.J., visited Disney World for the 18th time. Her family had not had a professional family portrait taken since their youngest child, Samantha, now 8, was born. They booked a one-hour photo shoot with Disney Fine Art Photography. They were photographed in the Morocco, Japan and France areas of Epcot before it opened for other guests. (Families can't book shots in the Magic Kingdom with its castle: That is reserved for "Disney Fairytale Wedding" couples.)

"We wanted to get a family portrait and vacationing and Disney World is what we love to do," says Ms. Bork. Enlarged photos from the shoot are now hanging in their home. Seven of the photos were featured in the family's Christmas card last year.

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